If you live anywhere in the country but here, I'll bet you're a sweaty
mess about now; half-crazed by the sun, hunkered over a bag of ice and
shoving coins in the air conditioner as fast as it'll take 'em. Here in
Seattle though, it's a comfy 78-degrees and I'm trying to decide if I
might need a sweater later. I am however, feeling a little anxious
because it's a very big day for me. You see, this is the first time I've
dared venture inside the hallowed halls of the coffee shop I used to
frequent; spending hours gazing out the window at Greenlake while
working on my book. Well, mostly just gazing, I guess. The damn place
went out of bidnis last New Year's Eve and left me flappin' in the
breeze. I know what you're thinking; Hey, it's Seattle, there must be
a dozen more coffee shops within a block. True enough, but still, I
haven't been able to find a suitable replacement - and my book writing
has suffered terribly. (Would you believe almost every chapter ends in a
clod fight? - can that be right?)

I should be able to settle just about
anywhere and turn out inspired prose but the truth is that I require a
certain atmosphere if I want my best work to bubble forth. For instance;
I needs me a roomy coffee shop with free cookie samples and ample acreage
in which to relax and spraddle; I require a table at the window with a
wall outlet for my tanning lamp and foot spa and a chair that can
support my ass without squeezing it like a muffin cup. I don't really
care what the coffee tastes like but the place must have a nice soy-chai
latte and a shady place in front to park so I can watch my little dawg
bark like a little maniac. That's a lot to ask, I know, but it's the way
it is.

Imagine my surprise when only an hour ago I
discovered that, after 8 months of sitting cruelly vacant, my beloved
writing abode of yore has suddenly become occupied by another coffee
bidnis! Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout! For months I'd
feared the worst and had assumed - this being Seattle and all - that it
would be turned into one more shiny real estate empire or, only slightly
better, a pet tattoo parlor.

Excited as all git-out, I made a wild,
squealing U-turn right there in the middle of Greenlake Way and sped
back home to fetch my laptop. Normally, I do not speed on neighborhood
streets or cut across parks and playgrounds, but I just couldn't help
myself today.

I hurried back to the coffee shop, parked
illegally (one wheel up on the sidewalk - bumper just slightly nudging a
fire hydrant), then dashed inside and placed my iBook on a table.
Ahhhhh, home at last! I'd never imagined that I would get my same
old beloved table back. I inhaled a deep breath, held it for a minute as
I centered myself, then walked over to the counter and blasted out a
bellyful of carbon dioxide. (when all the goodies is gone, I'm through
with it) The cashier wobbled backwards at the gust and looked
shell-shocked. I stood there a little out of whack myself, grinning,
wavering for a moment as I tried to recall what I'd been about to do. Oh
yes! With the calm equanimity only a bloodstream coursing with perky
oxygen bubbles can elicit, I crossed my fingers and toes and ordered a
tall glass of iced-tea. (I wear my boots extra-large so I can cross my
toes when I need to)

My eyes raked the wall menu - which was vast
and confusing; I couldn't find the drink-size delineation. Every danged
restaurant these days is different; what the heck did they call their
largest drinks? "vienti"? "grande"? "whoppin'"? "big
ol'spankin'"? I finally just told her what was on my mind; "Shay,
could I have your most humongous, thirsht quenchin' iced tea?"
Uh-oh. Would they even have iced tea? Yes! The girl seemed
suddenly familiar with the beverage and turned immediately to the task
of preparing it.

Dilemma number two; would they have a goodly sized container for
it? Or would this be one of those restaurants that serves iced tea in a
stingy little juice glass and calls it a Grande? Now listen to me
real good, podnas; my little barrista guys and gals; it's
summertime. On a scorching-hot summer day a man stumbles in out of
the heat and orders iced tea for one reason and one reason only: because
he needs to guzzle a mighty volume o' something extremely refreshing and
cold. I ran four miles today and it is vitally important that I be able
to place a drink order and know with certainty that an immense vessel of
something icy and invigorating is headed my way. (NOT a frozen
suppository!)

I waited anxiously to see what the girl behind
the counter would reveal and then . . . and then. . . Wheeeeee! Boy
Howdy! I jumped up and down. It was a big ol' monster of a cup
filled to the brim with clinkin' iced tea! Man oh man! It brought back
memories of my childhood in dusty ol' Amarillo, drinking
pitcher-after-pitcher of the stuff when my mom wasn't looking. She never
let me have much because she claimed I'd have kidneys withered to the
size of raisins by the time I was grown. I proved her wrong though; that
dang Lipton's was responsible in great part for the well-rounded and
jolly individual I've turned out to be. (though it is true that I
pee 43 times a day)

Of course, I've only just sat down with my barrel o' tea and will have
to wait until these ten packets of sugar dissolve, but I can tell you
already thangs is lookin' up for my next chapter. I have a feeling I may
finally be able to move on from rowdy clod fights to some of the more
gentle and passionate aspects of love making.

~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~

Once again Bungee pulls
a weak swimmer
from the waves

Speaking of scorching summer days, I've been
spending the hottest afternoons taking a dip in Lake Washington. I know
a little cove where there are surprisingly few people and I take my
little dawg down there and jump in for a swim in the heat of the day.
Bungee is less likely to jump in, prefering instead to watch me from the
shore with all the alertness of someone who sees her meal ticket bobbing
around in the waves, slipping farther and farther from the next
scheduled dinnertime. After a bit of swimming/floating/paddling/farting
in the water, I stroke back to shore, then snatch my reluctant little
pooch and take her out for swim.

She's a beautiful sight really, a natural
swimmer since she was just a pup. When she was only a year old I'd be
out at the Snoqualmie River with my girlfriend, MaryBeth - who was
Bungee's original host. (Maltese prefer that you refer to yourself as a
"host" and not a dog "owner") I'd swim out into the brisk current and
when I'd look back, MaryBeth would be giggling, coaxing Bungee out into
the river to get me. To both our astonishment, that wily little little
pooch would swim right out to the deepest part of the river to meet me.
There was only one problem with this: once she reached me she expected
me to hold her. So I'd be paddling hard with one hand and holding my
little pooch in the air with the other. MaryBeth would be bent over
slobbering, stumbling around in her flip-flops on river rocks and trying
to run away as I struggled to catch her and give her just the sort of
punishment a girl with a soggy dawg and a little orange bikini deserves.

I hit the mother lode.
My whole face was purple.

Well, back to yesterday. When you come out of
cool lake water on a hot summer day, what is the first thing you think
of? (no, not that you already think of that all day) What
you think of is how hungry you suddenly are. Lucky for me, the
shoreline is tangled with thickets of heavily laden blackberry bushes
and this is August, my little dog-paddlin' friends. Bungee found a spot
of sun to sit in and shiver while I slipped on my sandals and began
browsing. I'm telling you my Koolaid-guzzlin' pals, there is nothing
like eating sun-warmed blackberries on a hot August afternoon after a
cool swim in the lake. Within minutes I had purplish-stained hands and
wrists and tongue - and bloody shins; them are some spiky vines - but
worth it.

~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~

A couple of weeks ago my friend
Lisa invited me to go flying over the San Juan Islands with her small
son and her husband, Regis. Not having kids myself, I'm always awed by
the number of items a family must haul everywhere they go. Regis and I
were loaded down with half-a-dozen bags and some sort of a contraption
that looked like an off-road stroller. We lugged it all across the hot
tarmac to the plane and gratefully dropped it on the ground, sweating
and wheezing at the task. Suddenly, I heard a low, guttural sound of
excruciating pain - the likes of which I'll never forget. I swung my
head around just in time to see Regis freeze into what appeared to be a
pose of terror, but which turned out to be only one of sheer rage. There
is something blood chilling about the look on a man's face who is
standing at the door of the cockpit with his arm outstretched, key in
hand, when he realizes that he is holding not the airplane key; not the
very key to the plane he's just spent an hour driving to; but instead, a
key to the garden shed back home. Let's just say that the first word out
of Regis' mouth wasn't firetruck! Though you could certainly use
those letters to spell his exclamation and have a few left over.

There really are people who forget their airplane keys like you or I
might forget, say, the salad dressing when we buy groceries. But you
really shouldn't kick a $500,000 airplane or beat it about the wings
with a child's stroller. These are things both Regis and I were on the
verge of doing. Luckily, we're men just starting to mature and we were
able to foresee that destroying an expensive aircraft belonging to
someone else would only make the rest of the day - and possibly lifetime
- more unpleasant.

Regis broke out of his black mood and
serendipitously recalled that the person who was lending us the airplane
had another perfectly good plane in a nearby hangar that we could
borrow. Two in fact. Really? You have a friend who has several
airplanes you can borrow any time you like?! That's just wrong, I
thought to myself.

Regis steals a floatplane
while I stand around whistling

We reached the hangar and Regis
began preparing the second plane - which was a float plane. Oh. I guess
he didn't think to mention that we'd need to land in the ocean. No big
deal. I can hold my breath for hours if I have to. Then he showed me
little rollers on the bottom of the pontoons. Oh. We rolled the plane
outside and were about to taxi to the runway when the plane's rightful
owner just happened to drive up. He looked . . . well, sort of
surprised. I felt like I'd been caught stealing something a little more
expensive than watermelons and wasn't sure how to act. I didn't know
what to do with my hands. Uh, I'll just stand here and act like I
wasn't just now pushing some stranger's airplane away from his hangar,
I thought.

a little place I hope to acquire
after you buy a
few more CDs

Regis explained the situation and the owner
held up his hand. I ducked, thinking he was going to slap us for
"borrowing" his float plane. But he was simply telling us to hold up a
minute. He walked over and reached under a table, felt around for a
second, then pulled out a key taped to the underside. "Ah! Here's the
extra key." Alrighty then! Now we get to push the float plane back into
place, navigate the maze of roads, haul the stroller and bags back to
the same damn plane we were going to take in the first place. We
eventually got up in the air and flew to Boeing Field to pick up Lisa
and Aidenn and were finally off on our early morning journey - which was
commencing sometime around noon. I hadn't flown in a small plane in over
a decade and the view was breathtaking.

We had lunch at Bilbo's on
Orcas Island and I felt somewhat like I was cheating; like it wasn't
quite right that I hadn't had to drive an hour and a-half to Anacortes,
wait in a two-hour ferry line and take another hour's ferry cruise to
get to my favorite island. I had flier's remorse I guess you could say,
but I got over it quickly when I saw those magnificent islands from the
air.

We landed on San Juan Island
and walked the quarter mile to Roach Harbor, where hundreds of boats
were moored and people apparently without jobs were spending a leisurely
afternoon wandering the docks and cafes. It was like stepping into
another world and it brought back memories of a day MaryBeth and I had
spent there back in the 90s. It's rare that you can see a place twice,
ten years apart and find it almost identical. That's one of the things I
most love about the San Juan Islands; they change so very slowly
compared to the rest of the world.

On our way back to Seattle,
Regis flew over Bellingham and looped around Mt. Baker, flying as close
to a mountain as I'd been since I flew from Juneau to Glacier Bay twenty
years ago. In my mind I had cried and screamed and begged the pilot to
land. But of course, he never heard any of this because I held it all in
and suffered in silence. It's taken me years to recover and I was
worried I'd lose it completely this time. But there was no way I was
gonna cry if Aidenn didn't.

Aidenn keeps his cool - thereby forcing me to do
the same

I recently rediscovered this canvas chair that you hang
from a hook - it's called a Sky Chair - and it had been
stowed away in my garage for several years. I untangled
the ropes and hung it from a branch in a shady tree in
my front yard. That night I returned home around
midnight from a party thirty miles away - leaving
precisely because, in the midst of party chatter, I
decided I'd rather go home and swing in my chair. All
the way home I chuckled about my secret departure,
wondering how long it took for anyone to notice I was
gone. It's something I've done for years: leaving
parties without saying goodbye. It's nothing personal,
just a bad habit.

Anyway, after being around all the chatter all
evening, all I wanted to do was sit quietly in my Sky
Chair, play some songs and swing under the stars. It was
midnight and quiet out, everyone on my street seemed to
be quietly asleep. I hung there for a long time, swaying
an elliptical path under the branches, feeling satisfied
and peaceful. The older we get the more we forget what
it feels like to swing free of the earth; to tumble and
roll and sway in a swing and gaze up at the sky and let
go of everything but our imagination. I love having that
feeling again and am surprised at how much more easily
to comes when I'm floating under that tree.

After only a time there I start to drift, my mind
lightens and my thoughts are as suspended as my body. I
can almost feel the vibration of that benevolent tree
sizzling down the nylon rope into my body. It knows I'm
there, I'm sure of it. You can't hang 180 pounds on
somebody and pretend you didn't. In the cool, midnight
quiet, with the city asleep, I start to feel differently
about things. I start to wonder if there is not perhaps
some consciousness that comes alive under the stars,
something I knew as a child but have forgotten; a
spiritual intelligence and sense of wonder that I've
slept right through all these years.

I have a friend
named Christine who actually listens to plants and
animals, trees and rocks. She can tell you things about
a bird's habits or a squirrel's likes and dislikes that
would astound you. And she's speaking the truth.
One day she and I were hiking with several friends on a
forest path in the Cascade Mountains. The trail
undulates along a rushing mountain stream cutting
gracefully through granite boulders that lie alongside
several old-growth cedars; gigantic, two-hundred foot
tall trees, probably over a thousand years old. At
various times we'd step up the tangled giant roots
surrounding each one and reach out, spreading our arms
to embrace the trunk. It would take four or five people
joining hands to span the circumference of one of them.
It was a lovely experience, just pausing to feel the
energy of the trees and to look up in wonder at the
decades and centuries they had been alive.

resting on the trail

On the way back
to camp we found one of these majestic Grandmother trees
that had been struck by lightening many years earlier.
Almost a quarter-wedge of trunk had been stripped away,
leaving a long, vertical hollow. One at a time, each of
my friends stood in the hollow, in the very core of the
tree, closing their eyes, praying or meditating or
whatever they did, some asking to receive the tree's
loving, wise energy.

Everyone had headed on back to camp and Christine and I
were the last to stand by the old broken tree. Christine
nestled inside it and became suddenly silent; respectful
and reverent, as she always is in nature. She surprised
me by saying, "This tree is asking for some help.
It's really hurt and I need to stay here a while and run
some energy." I thought of my own life long habit of
taking from trees instead of giving, of my seeking love
and healing from them and how it had never occurred to
me that they might need me to give to them.
It was a humbling realization of what I have often
forgotten; that nature is there to help and sustain me -
but I am here to care for and preserve it as well. It
was heart opening to be in the presence of a healer who
truly listens and hears - and who gives constantly to
the natural world around her. Someone who actually holds
the great gift of knowing she can assist in the healing
of any living thing in distress. I've told many friends
that if I knew I or my dog was dying, she is the first
person on the planet I'd ask to assist with the
transition.

Photo by Michael Bigge

That day I lay
on a sculpted granite boulder by the creek, stretching,
feeling the vibration of stone beneath me as I waited
quietly for Christine. She spent probably close to an
hour in the heart of that ancient cedar and said she'd
like to come back and do more. I've learned a lot from
her over the years, I've learned a great deal about
humbleness and dedication. I definitely don't walk the
planet nearly as callously as I once did. I've seen her
do the same loving, healing work with human beings,
animals, plants, the very earth itself - always leaving
a healing glow with everything she touches.

It's easy to see someone with those great gifts and
forget that we all have them, that we all own healing
powers. I know this yet I often do not know exactly what
it is I can do to alleviate suffering or promote healing
in the world. My ego-mind goes to grandiosity and large
powerful gestures of healing - which of course, I have
no idea how to do. Inevitably, I go back to the simple,
small gestures, the ones I know I can do; looking at
another human being wishing them love and happiness;
taking deep breaths; sharing kindness with my eyes; just
being grateful for my life. I imagine you do these
things too, and it gives me hope to think so. It's a
hopeful thing to imagine that there are countless other
well-meaning souls out there in the world. I think it's
one of the reasons I sing my songs: to reach out and
remind people that we are all much the same in our
hearts and that there is hope in the world.

What I'm going to do tonight is just this one small
gesture: I'm going to swing in my chair and get that
clear, easy feeling I loved as a boy. Thanks for
visiting and for listening to my songs.

Your friend with the sticky purple fingers,
~Michael

October 5, 2005

Howdy, my carefree, leaf-kickin' friends,

Man, you're cool! I mean it. I wish
I was half as relaxed and easy goin' as you are, but it's a whole
nuther rickety world out there when you're a super-sensitive folkslinger
like myself. I undergo challenges the likes of which you folks in the
public sector have never even thought about. Example: I just finished
four weekends of concerts after going the entire summer without a show.
Standing onstage in Casper, Wyoming, and only three songs into my first
concert, I broke out in hives from the excruciating fingertip pain -
Yeowwww!Them strangs are like razor wire!Where the heck
did my calluses go? You, who are so incredibly lucky that you don't
play guitar, have no idea what it's like to be expected to warble a
tender ballad as sweetly as a chickadee while internally bellowing like
a wounded beast 'cause your dang fangers are on fire.

Let me try to 'splain it in a way that a
common layperson such as yourself might understand:

Did you ever slam a tailgate on
your finger and jerk it frantically back out again, then
fall down on the ground hollering for mercy just as a danged
donkey trots over and stands on what's left of it? Then,
before you can prize it out from under his hoof and get the
poor mangled digit into your mouth, the Snap-On Tool guy
stops by for a demo, grabs it and proceeds to squash it in
his new hydralic, rubber-handled vise-grips?

"Lookie here how good them thangs can
squeeze, Cuz." he says, grinning through picket-fence teeth, his
Snap-On shirt all drenched with Redbull. "Kin I sign yew up fer a
duzzin pair?"

"No, podna," I grunt, veins popping
out all over my neck. "I'll just be needin' the one you've snapped
onto my little pinky. I b'lieve they're gonna fit crossed-ways in your
teeth just fine."

Sorry, that's just how I talk when I'm
wounded. It goes back to my childhood in Texas and difficult days trying
to get my tongue off the ice tray. Anyway, that's the kind o' pain I'm
talkin' about, my feckless, non-guitar strummin' pals. Multiply that
throbbing pain by the number of fingers you have on one hand. (most of
you will come up with four if you didn't go to public schools - I don't
count my thumb, mainly 'cause I just use it occasionally to hitch a ride
or to poke my chest when folks ask who is my favorite songwriter).

The point of my story? Next time you see me
in concert, look closely when I'm singing Yellow Windows and see
if you can discern whether it's really the girl I'm crying over or my
danged throbbin' fangers. And don't blurt out the answer 'cause there's
plenty of folks who would be discouraged and maybe even irritated to
hear it. The last thing I ever want to see again at one of my concerts
is danged full-on riot.

~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~

This
afternoon I took a walk in the woods. There are many natural areas in and
around Seattle where you can step into the woods and almost forget there is
a city surrounding you. I had nowhere in particular to go - which is my
favorite state of being. Even as a boy I loved open ended afternoons, days
when I'd get out of school and know that I didn't have to do a single thing
that evening except to eat supper. Ask any one of my friends; I'm still like
that. I can even have something relatively pleasurable planned and I'll
happily scrap it in favor of waiting to see what we might like to do when
that time actually arrives.

Earlier in the day I had been to
see a wonderful healer I've gone to for many years and was feeling uplifted
and happy and wanted to do nothing but enjoy the autumn afternoon. I parked
my truck and got out and wandered around watching the leaves fall and
flutter in the wind as the sunny autumn morning rearranged itself into a
moody, slate gray afternoon. I love weather changes, especially those that
transform the open sunny sky into a swirl of raggedy clouds and restless
wind. I walked off the trail and into a clearing; an open meadow with a
brilliant yellow beech tree in the center, radiating sunshine in the midst
of the surrounding trees, which were still nearly as green as summertime. It
was breezy, the wind blowing around in such random ways that you couldn't
really tell from which direction it originally came. It was as if rivulets
of wind had peeled away from the Source, each stream furling and unfurling
in and out of hollows, caressing the shapes of hills and sifting through
trees before reporting back to the Big Current. I don't know this for sure,
it was just my take on it.

Of
course, I had my little pooch with me. I've had her for nine years now and
that little nubbin of a dog makes me laugh every day of my life. I might say
she is predictable but then, she probably thinks the same of me. Over the
years I have walked and hiked hundreds of miles with her but anytime we're
in new territory - any street or trail or beach that she's unfamiliar with -
she is instantly ready to turn around and head back. It's hilarious, really.
She'll put the brakes on as if she has no doubt she can stop a six-foot tall
man with her 8 pounds of determination. When I jolt to a stop and look back
to see why she paused, she'll spin immediately around and start trotting
back - until I hold steady. She looks astounded that I have not gone along
with her plan. It's the way she signals for me to join her that is so funny.
She uses psychology on me. Body language that is devised to convince me that
it's time to go now and that where she's taking me will be much more fun.
Her little fuzzy body takes on the look of joyful expectancy; unbridled
exhuberance. "Let's go this way! See how much fun it's gonna be?" But
I'm larger by some 170 pounds, a bull-headed man when it comes to my
rambling walks, and though I do give her a vote on some things (60
Minutes or Dateline; muffins or scones) I insist on deciding for
both of us when our little walk will loop back. She is dejected only
momentarily. The next time she feels me let up on the leash for an instant,
she spins around all over again and beckons me with her happy little body
language, assuming that my simple Texan mind has forgotten that I don't want
to go that way.

The instant I finally succumbed to
her psychological manipulations and feminine charm and turn around, she
perks up and leads me all the way back home; the line stretched taut as a
bow string, her perky little self trotting happily ahead, ears flopping and
head bobbing on her merry way to
all-that-is-safe-and-known-and-rich-with-treats. And I'm following,
laughing my head off the entire way.

A
couple of Saturday nights ago I played a concert at a rustic little hall on
Bainbridge Island; just a ferry ride across Puget Sound from downtown
Seattle. A friend who lived on the island had helped me set up, he arranged
chairs while I set up my equipment onstage and imagined the general form and
flow of the evening. I had brought a funny chapter to read to the audience
from the book most people no longer believe I'm writing, and I sat on the
edge of the stage and looked it over and the list of songs I was planning to
play. It was a beautiful sunny late afternoon, still bright and warm on the
second day of autumn. The little music hall nestled all by itself just at
the edge of the woods was an inviting place to spend the evening; a
wonderful space to invite people into, a room where they might feel calmed
and inspired and happy to be. I knew several folks were flying in from other
states for the show and I imagined how pleased they'd be to arrive and find
the quaint hall by the roadside at the edge of the woods. I'm always
surprised by the number of folks who fly in from afar for my concerts - I
assume it's because I don't play all that many shows and they figure if
they're ever going to get to hear me - at least before I'm a full-on geezer
- then they'd better catch a flight and come to me.

Though I love to spend time with
the audience at intermission and after the show, I prefer to be alone in a
quiet space before the show, so I stepped into a tiny room behind the stage
as the doors opened and folks began to file in. I could hear the talking and
laughter gradually bloom into a fuller, livelier sound as more and more
people arrived. Finally, I walked onstage and said hi. No introduction
necessary. It was my show; my production; I'd sold the tickets on my
website, emailed them to each and every person there and put Hershey Kisses
in each chair. If they were wondering who the guy with the guitar was, well,
somebody needed to collect their keys and arrange for a driver.

I opened with All Is Clear,
moved, when I'd thought of the lyrics earlier, by how they reminded me of
the thousands of people who'd had to leave their homes, their cities and
towns because of hurricanes.

It's been raining here, I can smell it in the
air
And I love this southern city like I spent my childhood here
It is inevitable that we will soon be saying our goodbyes
But I'll always have your skyline in my eyes

I have watched my friends scatter out across
the land
And I wonder if I'll live so long to see them all again
But if I don't, well it don't matter, I will love them all the same
For the hearts that I love most remain unchained

I introduced that song - like I
often do - as a good one to take deep breaths during. It seems to me that
every one on the planet needs to start taking as many deep breaths as we can
manage - and that music is one good way to get there.

I
sang one of my new songs, Things That I Don't Know, and somewhere
during the song I began to remember what I'd felt on the ferry coming across
Puget Sound that afternoon. I'd been thinking about a friend of mine who is
worried about the world we're leaving his children. I try to remind him that
there is always hope, there are always pathways that none of us can see
until we take a step and find our feet guided and that his kids have so much
love in their lives that they will find answers and solutions we can yet
imagine. But I don't have children and cannot really know the depth of his
concern.

I do understand why he worries; the
amount of data human beings are being bombarded with every day is
overwhelming. The news stories are mostly about death and destruction and
corruption. And the older we get it seems, the more most of us feel we have
lost. It takes a great deal of love and energy and determination to continue
to believe in Life and Love and Positivity as we age and experience so much
of what we dreamed of disappearing - or we realise that it never appeared at
all.

I
was immersed in this sense of loss when in the midst of it there came a
scent drifting in on the cool wind across the water through my open window
on the deck of the ferry. The scent carried with it the surprising
revelation that another autumn is here. It seems miraculous to me. How can
it be that in our pain and confusion; with war and tragedy and disease
raging on our planet; we're being given the unfathomable gift of yet another
brilliant season of fall on this planet? What tremendous love continues to
be showered on the Human Race in the form of this miraculous display of
light and scent and color and texture? That I could have such a revelation
gives me hope that I still possess the ability to ache inside at the beauty
of the changing seasons, that I can still thrill at the caress of the wind
and the sound of blowing leaves in the fall.

The flow of seasons is in nearly
every song I've ever written and no matter what loss comes in this life,
there is always the gift of weather and change. Just as you have, I too have
lost dreams and lovers and family and friendships and my own youth, but
somehow, there is still something inside me that jolts alive with yearning
when I see yellow leaves floating down around me, settling upon my shoes and
in my hair. I think what is really happening is that the brilliant love and
high spiritual intelligence within the changing seasons contain every lesson
we need in order to live a good life; one filled with gratitude and love and
joy and filled with the adventure we came here to experience.

We
are not just here to watch the seasons, we are to be a part of them, to
surrender to their moods and lessens. Each of our lives is as unique and
beautiful and natural as the maple leaf which flutters over and over in the
sunlight and settles like a letter delivered to the rocky ground. Every
autumn of my life that I can remember, I have noticed some early
yellow-orange leaf and bent to pick it up, held it to the sky to see through
it as I might a love letter in a pale vellum envelope, noting the veins, the
scalloped edges, the way the dark green of the stem dissolves into pale
green and yellow and at the very tip, seems dipped in scarlet. There's a
full life story written there and I seek to understand it - but don't mind
that I never do. It's a beautiful mystery.

Thanks
for visiting me, my fine, autumn friends. I only have one
suggestion for you this fall - don't be too quick to rake the
leaves. Just wave and smile at your neighbors with their noisy,
insane
leaf blowers. Allow the leaves in your yard to gather and lie
there awhile, rustling and scattering, gathering in mounds along
the fence. And then when you finally do rake them, form a big ol'
pile and remind yourself of what it feels like to fall down in
crackly leaves and gaze at the sky through empty branches. Let
me know how it works out for you.

Your friend on a breezy Seattle day, ~Michael

I have
longed to know the reason
For the winding wheel of time
Ever grinding through the seasons
Till it always breaks my heart
Every year when the lovely garden dies . . .
The things that I don't know ~

You can probably tell that I delve deeply every month into
my reserve of colorful greetings, seeking just the perfect
one for your seasonal situations. If I'm off the mark,
please don't feel left out. Just insert whatever clothing
items you're wearing this moment; football pads and
cummerbund; galoshas and full body girdle; a sock and a
rubber band. Regardless of your attire, I'm talkin' to you,
is what I'm trying to get at: I returned recently from a
concert tour in New England where I barely outran Hurricane
Wilma. Had I known she was going to chase me all the way up
there I'd have stood my ground in Key West and flailed the
heck out of her with the paddles from my rented rowboat. I
think I coulda turned her toward Bermuda at the least. No
need for her to flood everything east of the Mississippi to
get at me. But I misread her intentions, thinking that, like
most storms, she was after anybody but me. It's been a long
time since I've had a weather formation of any kind come
hunting me down personally. I mean, as a kid sure, there was
the occasional tornado with my name on it. You can't grow up
in the Texas Panhandle without noticing some dust-bustin'
funnel cloud has it in for you.

I'll tell you, when I'd notice
this strange, vindictive weather phenomenon most often was
just after telling a bald-faced lie to my mama or
shoplifting a candy bar at the corner grocery store. Both
them thangs seemed to bring on dark, lurking weather with a
grudge. Man, I'd be no more than halfway through wolfing
down a big ol' nickle-sized stolen Nestle's Crunch Bar when
I'd hear a low, rumbling roar and feel the earth shake and
the little hairs on my skinny, cub scout neck stand up and
bristle. "Uh-oh. Maybe I shoulda not stoled this,"
I'd mumble to myself, chocolate squirting out the corners of
my mouth. "Maybe I shoulds jis stoled half of it."
I'd qualify, chomping faster and faster, so as to have my
air passage clear in case I had to seriously run for it. You
cain't run worth a damn with a mouth full o' goodies, cause
they will tend to get sucked up yer nose. I'd learned that
lesson on a footlong hotdog once at a third grade softball
game. I learned mostly that you shouldn't eat and pitch at
the same time. It was highly embarrassing.

Please don't think that I was nothing but a thieving little
tyke when I was growing up. I also read books about Davy
Crockett. I mean, I read 'em all. If there was one I didn't
get to, it had to have been written in Arabic. I also shot
my bb gun out my folk's bedroom window when they were gone
to buy groceries. I know they must have wondered how all
them little round holes magically appeared in their window
screen. They never asked me though, so I didn't feel bound
to make nothin' up. If you're even halfway good at bein' a
kid, you don't have to plan all that much for stories to
cover your tracks. You coulda asked me out of the blue
anytime about them holes in the screen and I'd have had
numerous plausible stories instantly ready to offer up. "I
think it was them horseflies, Mama. I seen 'em get a running
start and plow right on through it one day when you was
fryin' chicken." or "I don't know for sure mama, but do you
think when Daddy sneezes that he might be damagin' the
screens?" See what I mean? Believable explanations was a
dime a dozen for me. I guess I was destined to become a
sensitive songwriter.

Anyway, back to New England. I
waited out most of the stormy Wilma weather at some friends'
house in Bedford, New Hampshire. I was there to perform a
private concert for fifty or so folks from all over the
country and ended up staying five nights with my hosts.
Usually I stay in a hotel when I'm hired for a private
concert but Randy and Jennifer roped off a bedroom for me,
talked their dog, Dallas, into not chewing my leg off and
well, they just made it all so welcoming for me that I
couldn't pry myself away.

I arrived the evening before my concert to a house full of
their family and friends. Some of them I knew from some
shows I'd played in Maine the year before and I felt right
at home in the group. The next day we spent a chilly
Saturday outside, shivering and sipping cold beers, while
watching Randy's brother John, fry Buffalo Wings in the
driveway for the evening's festivities. I am pretty sure I
was the only person in the whole house that has never had a
Buffalo Wing 'tween my teeth and never will. Since half the
people there were from Buffalo, I was lucky I wasn't tarred
and feathered.

This was the only concert I've
ever performed where I was required by local ordinance to
carve a punkin before I could go onstage. In fact, every
person in attendance was required to carve one. Man, you've
never seen a family more prepared for the creation of
jack-o-lanterns than Jenni and Randy Fritz were. Out in the
backyard next to the woods were dozens of pumkins to choose
from and every person who walked in the front door was
immediately led to the back door and told to go choose a big
orange doozey for themselves. In the basement were tables
and chairs set up, good lighting and tools aplenty. Randy
was even walking around with a power jigsaw cutting the tops
out of everybody's pumkin so they could get right down to
the bidnis of spillin' pumkin guts and carving noses.

In the past when I've been asked
at parties to carve a pumkin, I've usually been handed a
giant butcher knife and a scrawny little deformed gourd to
work with. Thus, I've always stabbed at the thing about a
dozen times, cut the traditional triangle eyes and jagged
mouth and called it good. Man, you couldn't get away with
that at this party. This was jack-o-lantern carving as High
Art. And since I was going to go onstage in an hour or two
in front of all these serious artists I did not want to be
the only person there considered a creative failure. So for
the first time in my completely unartistic life I got
serious as broken toe and dove in with the garden tools to
render a fairly realistic sculpture in pumkin. Had I not
accidentally left a little spinach in his teeth, I think my
boy might have won the grand prize. (a bowl of punkin soup)
Here is my humble self portrait; a rendition of myself in
all kinds of bliss after recently meeting the woman of my
dreams. What woman could refuse an honest, sincere grin like
that? Even if the eyes do give away a somewhat simple
mind.

I returned to Seattle thinking that autumn would be all
over. Usually in the fall we have a handful of wildly windy
days that take off all the last of the leaves around the end
of October. To my delight, this year autumn has gone on and
on. I've been going running on the streets and on trails
through the ravine near my house and this late autumn has
been spectacular. There are about as many leaves on the
ground as in the trees and as I'm running down streets and
sidewalks the world seems transformed. Shades of deep red
and rust, patches of yellow and orange blanketing the ground
and sky along my path.

And
now here we are only just over a week from Thanksgiving. I
love this time of year. I love the meaning of that Holiday
and the sharing of food and humor and conversation with
friends and family. Years back, in the late 80s, just after
I'd released my Still Believe album, I remember a
Thanksgiving where my girlfriend Teresa and I had parted and
everyone I knew was going out of town or hanging out with a
girlfriend's or boyfriend's family. I didn't really have any
place to go for Thanksgiving dinner. I'm sure I could have
invited myself to somebody's house but I couldn't bring
myself to do it. Still, I was determined not to sit around
feeling lonesome all day, so I packed a lunch and drove out
to the Skykomish River. There's a beautiful stretch of river
near Mt. Index where friends and I have gone for years. I'd
never gone by myself though and it seemed a bit strange to
be doing so.

It was raining that day and probably not the best time for a
picnic, but I had come prepared. After I found a place to
park along the road, I grabbed my lunch and a big blue tarp
and I climbed down the embankment and began to scramble
along the rocks and boulders that were different every time
I came to the river. After times of flooding you could go to
the same spot you'd been to a hundred times and nothing
would look the same. I've seen boulders the size of small
houses simply disappear. I had no idea where they'd gone,
but the idea that a wall of water could rearrange such a
landscape kept the place feeling magical and powerful to me.

I balanced on some rocks in the water and made my way to a
place where the current was pretty fast and smooth. There
was kind of a table rock leaning out over the water and I
found a hollow beneath it and weighted my tarp with some
rocks and made a sort of cave for myself. There in my little
cavern I spent all of Thanksgiving afternoon. Eating my tuna
sandwich and moon pie, sipping a cold beer I'd placed in the
river. It was excellent real estate, a phenomenal location;
I sat beneath the tapering rock and tarp no more than two
feet from raging water, the current strong and pure and
solid as it rolled over smooth rocks a foot below the
surface there. I could hear nothing but river. Someone could
have stood fifty yards away, hollering all kinds of insults
at me and if I'd have seen them I'd have waved real friendly
and grinned like a fool. I just couldn't hear a thing but
water and rocks.

That Thanksgiving day was good for me. Having just parted
from my girlfriend, it was naturally a sad time and a lonely
time. And holidays usually make loneliness even more
painful. But something about that water, the steady flow of
it over granite, the rough noise of it but also the deep
gurgles it made too; the soft, swooshing music water creates
as it slowly hollows stone and has it's way with rock that
has no clue it's slowly being smoothed down to grains of
sand.

That same peaceful, patient
force worked it's way on me as well. I wasn't planning on
hanging around long enough to get all worn smooth, but the
thing is, the water worked it's will on me just the same as
it did on granite. I read somewhere recently that water
seeks to rejoin itself. Ever notice the way a drop of water
will be sucked into a larger pool if it get's close enough?
Well, that's what that water did to me. Knowing by it's
nature that I happen to be some 90% or more made of water
myself, it seeked to bring me back into the watery family.
And so it compelled me by way of music and mist. Singing
it's low, rumbling song, the shifting of underwater rocks
joining in on loose percussion, it lulled me into forgetting
that I was alone and sad. It never had a doubt that this
would happen. The water didn't think "I sure hope we can
perk up Michael and get him to thinking thankful thoughts
after a while."

No, it didn't say no shit like that. It just smiled and
hummed and rolled and washed and flowed and bestowed upon
all things within it's influence a calming presence. And by
the time I saw the day's light growing faint and the
darkness wicking through the woods from the East, I gathered
the remains of my dinner, folded my wet tarp and climbed
back over rocks and stones and boulders to my car and drove
back home a peaceful man.

This story probably sounds like it has very little to do
with you and your Thanksgiving, but to that I say "Now, hold
on a minute, podna." Here is what it has to do with your
Thanksgiving: whether you are on your own this year or with
a partner or sweetheart or family or a group of strangers,
you might want to remember that everybody in the room, in
the house, in the bar even, is made up mostly of water. Just
think about it. No wonder you need to pee all the dang time.
You're each essentially a big wet drop of the stuff and
whether you know it or not, you're trying like crazy to
rejoin the ocean. So, if you're with people, sidle up to
somebody now and then throughout the day and put your arm
around their shoulder. You'd be surprised how seldom that
happens when we most need it. Put your arm around a shoulder
and find some way, silent or verbal, to convey the idea that
"Brother, I'm with you, whatever you got goin' in this
lifetime. And I'm thankful that you exist."

That seems like kind of an awkward thing to say to somebody,
doesn't it? "Hey! You, yes you, the feller driving the
Honda. Just wanted you to know that I'm thankful you exist.
Well, that's it. That's all I wanted to say. Thanks for
pulling over."

See how easy it is?

And if you're on your own and don't see any handy human
beans to tell this to, well, tell it to a tree, my friend.
I'll guarantee there is a tree near you that has not been
thanked for a very long time. Pick a scrawny one and you'll
know for sure that's the case.

See, what I'm getting at is this. Give thanks for everything
and to everything. Thank the dang rock that you stubbed your
toe on, for without it's intervention you were surely going
to go out dancing and since you can't dance now, you
completely missed out on the 99-car pile-up in the fog. See?
That rock ain't no doofus. It deserves to be thanked.

And so do you. I for one, will
thank you right now from the bottom of my heart. Chances are
you weren't just surfing the internet looking for
folkslingers and just happened to visit me. My guess is that
you like at least one of my songs, or you have heard that
I'm a crazed stream-o-consciousness writer of hilarious
repute and you thought you might like to check out my site
for a chuckle. Either way, I thank you for stopping by. In
case you're one who has listened to my music over the years
or shared it with friends, I thank you for that too. But
even if you are indeed just a straggler who got lost online
and accidentally ended up reading this unusual rambling,
well my friend, I thank you for being you. I think you do
the best job of it of anybody I've met. In fact, there are
some poor imitations out there and I'm just grateful the
real you showed up.

Well, I must go now because my dawg says to. She says what
goes. Happy Thanksgiving to you.